Design of a Collaboration Mechanism based on Capacity Exchange Prices

DATE: October 7, 2009

TIME: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

LOCATION: Executive classroom

FEES: none

EVENT CONTACT:

Anita Race, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Contact Anita Race

TITLE: Design of a Collaboration Mechanism based on Capacity Exchange Prices in Multicommodity Flow Networks

SPEAKER: Luyi Gui

ABSTRACT:

A network is called a collaborative one if the network users share edge resources. We study a collaborative multicommodity flow (MCF) network model with multiple source-sink pairs and design a collaboration mechanism based on capacity exchange prices so as to subtly regulate the selfish behaviours of the players. It can be shown that efficient prices can be found so that the social welfare is maximized even under a decentralized setting in static MCF networks with capacity and demand levels fixed. Moreover, under certain conditions the individual payoffs induced under the mechanism are fair in terms of that no one profits less by joining the grand coalition. We also consider the sensitivity of such a price mechanism to the variations in capacity and demand levels and introduce some prospective approaches to reinforce the robustness of the mechanism.

This is a joint work with Prof. Ozlem Ergun.